"Well," he said, "you are in almost every way your own mistress, but there are points on which what I say stands. This house was built for my mother. I have brought my wife home to it now, and Mrs. Heaton does not enter its door."
Carrie rose and faced him, imperious, but at last dangerously cold in her anger.
"Your wife!" she said. "Could you have expected that I should ever be more than that in name to you?"
The veins showed swollen on the man's forehead as he looked at her, and a dark flush crept into his bronzed cheek.
"Madam," he said, "now you have gone that far, you have got to tell me exactly what you mean."
"It should be quite plain. You could buy me. It sounds absurd, of course, and a trifle theatrical, but it is just what took place, and there are no doubt many of us for sale. Isn't that alone sufficient to make me hate you? Can't you realise the sickening humiliation of it, and did you suppose you could buy my love as well?"
Leland made her a little inclination which, though it was the last thing she had expected just then, undoubtedly became him. "I had 'most ventured to hope that you might give it me by-and-bye," he said.
His restraint did not serve him. The girl realised that she was in the wrong, but she had failed in her desire to look down on him. This she naturally felt was another grievance against him. She had the old disdain of those who own the land for those who till it, and, although in this man's case, the contempt shestrove to feel seemed out of place, it was horribly humiliating to recognise that she was wholly in his hands.
"To you?" she said, with a bitter laugh that brought the dark flush to his face again.
Leland laid his hand on her shoulder and gripped it hard.
"I have, perhaps, no great reason for setting too high a value on myself," he said. "What I am you know, but, if you must have plain talk, there were two men made the bargain that disposed of you. It cost me a big share of my possessions to satisfy your father, but he showed no unwillingness to take my cheque, and he would have taken Aylmer's could he have raised him high enough. Who was the lowest down, the Western farmer, who, at least, meant to be kind to you, or Branscombe Denham, who was willing to sell his daughter to the highest bidder? Still, you were right. It was, in one way, about the meanest thing I ever did. The blood was in my face when I made my offer—and your father smiled. By the Lord, if I'd made that proposition to any hard-up wheat-grower between here and Calgary, he'd have whipped me from his door."
The girl had plenty of courage, but she was almost afraid of him now, for there was a strength and grimness in his bronzed face which she had never seen in that of any Denham, and the tightening grip of his ploughman's fingers bruised her shoulder cruelly. Perhaps unconsciously, he shook her a little in a gust of passion, and she set her lips hard to check the cry she would not have uttered had he beaten her.
"Now," he said, "in any case, you belong to me.That has to be remembered always. How are we to go on? What is it to be?"
Carrie contrived to smile sardonically. "Oh," she said, "sit down, and try to be rational. All this is a trifle ridiculous."
Leland dropped his hand, and, when she sat down, leaned upon the back of the other chair facing her.
"Well?" he said.
"It seems to me that we must quietly try to come to an understanding once for all to-night. In the first place, why did you wish to marry me?"
Leland set his lips for a moment. It would have been a relief just then to tell her that it was to save her from Aylmer, but this appeared a brutality to which he could not force himself, for, in spite of what she had told him, he could not be sure that it had been his only reason. Her shrinking from him, painful to him as it was, nevertheless had its attraction.
"I believe I said that you were the most beautiful woman I had, at least, ever spoken to," he said. "I was a lonely man, and it seemed to me I might, perhaps, do big things some day, with a woman of your kind to teach me what I did not know. That was part of it, but I think there was more. It was a hard life and a bare one here, and I had a fancy that you could show me how much I might have that I was missing. A smile would have helped me through my difficulties; a word or two when one had to choose between the mean and right, and the knowledge that there was some one who believed in me, would have made another and gentler man of me. Well, it seems that you have none of them to give me."
He made an emphatic gesture. "Still, we have to face the position as it is, and my part's plain. Everything you have been used to you shall have, so far as I can get it for you. You can have any of your friends here who will make the journey and be civil to your farmer-husband, and you can go to them when it pleases you. To save you ever asking me for money, I will open you an account in a Winnipeg bank, and you need never see me unless you wish to."
"Ah," said Carrie, "you are, at least, generous. To make the understanding complete, what do you expect from me?"
Leland moved and laid his hand upon her shoulder again.
"Only to remember that, however little you think of your husband, you are my wife, after all."
The girl's cheeks burned, but she looked up at him with a little hard laugh. "I think I could have struck you for that, but it must go with the rest. Still, even if I were all that your imagination could picture me, and went as far as Mrs. Heaton did, why should it trouble you?"
Leland stooped lower over her with the veins swollen on his forehead and a glint in his eyes.
"You and your father tricked me—taking all I had to offer for nothing," he said. "I suppose I ought to hate you, too—and still I can't."
Once more he gripped her cruelly. "By the Lord, dolt that I am, I think I almost love you for the grit that made you show your scorn. Still, that doesn't count. It is for me to go it alone."
He let his grasp relax and left her suddenly, turning at the door.
"You will want a companion. Will you write for Mrs. Annersly to-morrow?"
"I will," said Carrie coldly. "Under the circumstances it is advisable. She will be a protection."
He went out and she saw no more of him for a day or two, but that night she found a blue mark upon the whiteness of her shoulder.
Dusk was creeping up from the eastwards across the great snow-sheeted plain when Leland pulled his horses up where a little by-track branched off from the beaten trail. Behind him the wilderness, losing its gleaming whiteness and fading into shades of soft blue-grey, ran level to the hard blueness on the northern horizon. In front of him there were rolling rises ridged with sinuous bands of birches, black in broken masses against the lingering light in the south and west. There was room for wheat enough to glut markets of the world on the leagues of rich black loam that undulated to the frozen waters of Lake Winnipeg. Already miles of it were banded together by belts of two-foot stubble; but as yet the plough had not invaded the land of bluff and ravine, creek and coulee, where the shaggy broncho and the wild steer ran.
Leland was wrapped to the eyes in an old fur coat, and his breath rose like steam into the dead still air. A cloud of thin vapour floated above the horses. It was exceptionally cold, and Gallwey, who sat half-frozen beneath the piled-up robes, wondered why hiscompanion had pulled the team up there when they were within some twenty minutes' ride from shelter. Still he did not consider it advisable to inquire, for certain colts of a blooded sire had been missing, and Leland, who had shown signs of temper during the day, looked unusually grim. Flinging the reins to Gallwey, he stepped down stiffly from the sleigh.
"Drive on slowly, Tom. You don't want to keep a warm team standing in this frost," he said.
Gallwey contrived to clutch the reins, though his hands were numbed through the big mittens.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"Look at these tracks," said Leland drily. "They kind of interest me."
Gallwey spoke to the team, and the sleigh, which consisted of a light waggon-box mounted on a runner frame, slid on. Sleighs such as are used about the Eastern cities are not common in the Northwest, where, indeed, the snow seldom lies so deep or long; and the prairie farmer either makes shift with his waggon or contents himself with the humble bob-sled. He now noticed what he had been too cold to notice before, that there was something peculiar about the print of hoofs breaking out here and there, a blur of scattered blue smudges in the trail he followed. Some seemed deeper than others, and there were long spaces where they disappeared altogether. This did not seriously concern him, so he drove on until he reached the first grove of stunted birches which clung beneath the shelter of a winding rise. Here he waited until Leland rejoined him. It was quite dark now, and he could not see his comrade's face at all, but, as he flung himself into the sleigh, he laughed in a fashion of his that Gallwey knew usually portended trouble.
"Go on," Leland said. "I want my supper, and a little talk with Jeff Kimball, too. One would have figured that man had a little more sense in him. It's 'most two weeks, I think, since you had any snow?"
"A week last Monday. Just enough to dust the trail. Is there anything particular to be deduced from that?"
"Only that we had the rustlers round next day, and I've a kind of notion my colts went then."
Gallwey sat silent while the sleigh glided on. He did not know, of course, that Leland had quarrelled with his wife, but he had noticed the man's grimness during the day, and now he was struck with the ring of his voice as he spoke of the rustlers.
The cattle war in Montana across the neighbouring border, in which the great ranchers and small homesteaders contended for the land, was over; and, when the United States cavalry restored order, little bands of broken men, ruined in the struggle, and cattle-riders who found their occupation gone, had undertaken a smuggling business along the frontier. The Prohibition Act was enforced in neighbouring parts of Canada, and there was accordingly an excellent profit to be made on any whisky they could run. There was, too, among the Chinamen in the United States a good demand for opium, which it was supposed came in via Vancouver. For the most part, the smugglers were tolerated, perhaps from the same motives that prompt otherwise honest people to pardon outlaws who rob the rich and the government. At any rate, a farmer seldom grumbled when a horse wasrequisitioned, though he knew that the animal might not be returned. As a reward for his silence, he was likely to find mysterious cases of whisky near his trail. His opposite conduct could carry with it many results. For instance, grass-fires, so dangerous to homesteads and ripening crops, had a suspicious way of starting in the harvest season. The small farmer, accordingly, was loth to trouble the mounted police about anything he might have heard or seen, and the rustlers as a rule knew when to stop, and only seized a horse or killed a steer for meat when they urgently needed it.
"Do you think it's worth while making trouble?" said Gallwey, suggestively.
"I want my colts back," said Leland. "I guess I'm going to get them. Shake that team up. It's getting cold."
Gallwey, who was half frozen already, called to the horses, and in another ten minutes they came into sight of a blaze of cheerful radiance in the gloom of a big bluff. Leland held the big cattle run in the vicinity, though it lay a long ride from his homestead.
Gradually a little log house grew into shape, and Leland, who drove the sleigh round to the back of it before he got out, turned to the man who had slouched from the doorway.
"I guess we'll leave the sleigh here," he said. "We have come for the night, and we'll put the team in while you get supper."
Though he could not see the man's face for the dark, Gallwey fancied he was a little disconcerted at this announcement. In another half-hour, however, they were sitting down to a meal. Leland said very little until it was over, when, taking his pipe out, hepulled a hide chair up to the stove and looked at the man. "Whom have you had round the place the last week or so, Jeff?" he said.
"Thompson," said the other. "He brought four or five horses along."
"He did. I saw his tracks where he headed off the trail for the back range. Quite sure he hadn't any more? That reminds me; I'll want to see him in a day or two about those steers."
Gallwey fancied this last was meant as an intimation that accuracy was advisable, and he watched the big, loose-limbed man who was filling his pipe just then. He appeared uneasy under all this scrutiny, for Leland was also quietly regarding him.
"Now I come to recollect, it was four."
"Anybody else?" said Leland.
"Custer; he came along with a bob-sled yesterday."
"You can't think of any more?"
"No," said the other man, who flashed a suspicious glance at him. "I can't quite figure how I could when they weren't there."
Leland smoked on tranquilly, apparently considering for a moment or two, and then, straightening himself a little, looked hard at the man.
"Jeff," he said quietly, "it's a kind of pity you don't know enough to make a decent liar."
The man started, but seemed to recover himself again, and it was with quickening interest Gallwey watched the pair. A smoky kerosene lamp gave out an indifferent light, and a red glare beat out from the open door of the stove, streaming uncertainly upon the faces of the men.
It showed Leland sitting motionless, a hard glintin his eyes, and the other man making little uneasy movements as he shrank from the steady gaze. As Leland spoke again, the man winced.
"If any man had said as much to me, one of us would have been out in the snow by now," he said. "Have you no grit in you? Then why in the name of thunder did you take hold of a contract that was 'way too big for you? Did you think I could be bluffed by a thing like you?"
"I can't quite figure what you mean," said the other man sullenly.
"Then I'll have some pleasure in telling you. Soon after the last snow fell, two rustlers came up this trail—there were more of them, but they stayed down by the big one. When they went away, three of my horses went with them. Now, who caught those horses and had them ready? It's kind of curious, too, that they were the pick of the bunch, with good blood in them. The only man round here who could tell them which were worth the lifting is you. Jeff, you don't know enough to run a peanut stand, and yet you figured you were fit to kick against the man who hired you."
Jeff appeared to rouse himself for an effort. "You're guessing a good deal of it."
"Guessing, when I've lived on this prairie all my life, and the whole thing is written there in the snow. Can't I tell the difference between the tracks of a steady ridden horse and a young one that's not used to the halter? However, I'm open to listen now."
"I've just this to say. It won't hurt you to lose a horse or two, and that's about all anybody has ever taken out of you, while it's quite likely you'll be worseoff if you make trouble about it. In fact, taking it all around, you can't afford to get rid of me."
"Anyway, that is what I mean to do. I have no use for a man who sells my property to his friends. You'll get out of this place to-morrow."
"I guess I'll go right now. Thompson will take me in."
"No," said Leland sharply; "you'll stay just where you are until the morning, though you can take your blankets into the other room as soon as you like. It's quite hard to keep my hands off you, and if you come out before I call you to make breakfast, I'm not going to try."
Jeff said nothing further, but, taking two dirty blankets out of a hay-filled bunk, shuffled away into a second room behind a log partition. Leland went after him, and, laying his hands on the little window, shook it violently.
"If you try to get out that way, we're going to hear you, and then you'll be sorry for yourself," he said.
He came back and, flinging himself into the chair beside the stove, filled his pipe.
"I don't quite know how you worried the thing out, and perhaps it doesn't greatly matter, but I rather think it was good advice he gave you," said Gallwey reflectively. "You certainly can afford to lose a horse or two, and the rustlers are the kind of people it is just as well to keep on good terms with. Sergeant Grier has only three or four troopers, and the outpost is quite a long way off."
Leland smiled. "Well," he said, "horse-stealing is getting to be a good deal more profitable business thanliquor-running. They get horses for nothing, and they have to buy the whisky. They haven't gone very far into it yet, but it's a sure thing that they will if they find out that none of us seem to mind it. Somebody has to make a protest, and it may as well be me."
"So far as my observation goes, most men would rather let their neighbour make it first," said Gallwey drily. "You, however, seem to be an exception."
Leland's face hardened. "The fact is, I feel like taking it out of somebody soon. I have had a good deal to worry me."
"One would not have expected you to feel like that just now."
"I guess we'll change the subject," said Leland grimly. "You are wondering what I sent Jeff in there for? Well, I didn't want him loose on the prairie. It seems to me he's expecting a visit from his friends, and I'd just as soon they came and let me have a word with them. You get into the bunk there, and go to sleep until I want you."
Wrapping one of the sleigh robes about him, Gallwey lay down for the night. He saw Leland put the light out and sit down again by the snapping, crackling stove. Through its open door a flickering radiance now and again touched his earnest face. Though they had been out since dawn in the stinging frost, he sat firmly erect, gripping his unlighted pipe and gazing straight in front of him with hard, unwavering eyes. Behind him the shadows played upon the walls of the gloomy shanty, quiet save for the moan of the bitter wind. Gallwey, who did not think it was the rustlers, wondered what was worrying his comrade,until his eyes grew heavy, and, though he had not intended it, he fell asleep wearily.
Leland, however, sat still while the crackle of the stove died away, and the stinging cold crept in. He had much to think of, and could see no way out of the difficulties that beset him and his wife. He had known that she had no love for him, but, since the night she had met him on the terrace steps at Barrock-holme, his admiration for her had grown steadily stronger, and he had been conscious of a curious tenderness whenever he thought of her. Her smile was worth the winning by any effort he could make, and the odd kind word she occasionally flung him would set his heart thumping.
Then the revelation had come, and left him dismayed. He had never counted on her hating him, as it now seemed she must do, or regarding him as one so far beneath her that the most she could feel for him was an impersonal toleration. He was a proud man, and her words had stung him deeply. It was galling to realise that he was bound to a woman who shrank from him and despised him, and that the bonds were unbreakable, no matter how irksome they might become to both his wife and himself.
Then that mood passed, for there was a silent, deep-seated optimism in him that had carried him through frozen harvests and adverse seasons, and he began to appreciate her point of view, and that it might not be an unalterable one. He did not blame her for her courage, or even for her scorn, though it had hurt him horribly. It was for him to prove it unwarranted, or with patience to live it down, but he did not know how either could be done, and now and then a littlefit of anger set his blood tingling as he sat in the growing shadows beside the emptying stove. His resentment was not so much against the woman as the man who had, knowing what she must feel, forced her into marrying him; but they were in England, and he felt illogically that he must strike at some one nearer, which was why he waited for the rustlers. He had no pistol. It is not often that the plainsman carries arms in Western Canada, but there was a big axe at Jeff's wood-pile, which would, he fancied, serve in case of necessity. At last, when the stove had almost gone out, he roused himself to attention with a little start in the bitter cold and, rising, touched Gallwey.
"Get up!" he said. "Slip in behind the door, and shut it when I tell you. There are horses on the trail."
Gallwey did as he was bidden, half asleep, though he heard a beat of hoofs that grew louder. Then there was a stamping of feet outside, and Leland flung a few split billets through the open top of the stove. A sharp crackling followed, and a blaze sprang up, but the light only flickered here and there, leaving the room almost dark.
"Let them in!" he said.
The door swung open. Two shadowy figures, shapeless in fur coats and caps, appeared in the opening, and one of them turned sharply when Gallwey slammed the door behind him.
"Now," he said, "what is that for? I don't seem to recognise you, anyway."
Leland laughed. "Come right in, gentlemen. I've been waiting to see you, and there's no mistake. Jeff's in the second room yonder, and if he ventures to comeout with any notion of making trouble he'll run a considerable risk of getting himself hurt."
He had raised his voice a trifle, and the rustle that had commenced died away in token that Jeff had heard. In the meanwhile one of the rustlers had slipped his hand inside his furs; but Leland, who noticed it, made a little gesture.
"I guess it's not worth while," he said. "If you'll sit down a minute, I have a word or two to say to you."
One of the men did so, but the other stood near the door watching Gallwey, who was, on the whole, thankful that he had taken down Jeff's rifle.
"Well?" said the first outlaw. "It was Jeff who gave us away?"
"Not exactly. At least, he didn't mean to. You should have got a smarter man before you ventured to put up a bluff on me. Still, that's not the question. When are you going to bring my horses back?"
"I'm afraid I can't quite promise," said the other with a chuckle. "With us, finding is sometimes keeping."
"You have two weeks. If they're not back in that time, you're going to be sorry."
The outlaw laughed openly. "Come down and look at it reasonably. We have got to live, and we have, after all, stuck you for very little. With four police troopers to watch this part of the country, there's nothing you can do. I guess we've got our grip on it just now."
"You have two weeks to bring back my horses in."
"Then you mean to insist on it?" said the other man.
"I do. Don't you get to thinking the honest men in this country are a bit afraid of you. They're only lazy. We have nothing to do with the whisky, but this horse-lifting has got to be stopped. Get out, and remember it, before I use my feet on you."
The outlaw was a big man. As he slipped his hand beneath his furs, Leland quietly reached for the axe.
"I could shear your arm off before you got it out," he said. "Will you lay it down, and see if you can stop in this shanty when I tell you to get out."
The rustler looked at him for a moment, and, though there was very little light, was apparently satisfied.
"No," he said. "I guess that's not business, anyway. You won't get your horses, but I'll give you good advice. Sit tight, and mind your farming, and it's quite likely you won't lose any more. We're not nice folks when we're roused, but we're not looking for trouble."
"You'll get it," said Leland drily, "unless my horses are back two weeks to-night. Open the door, Tom, and let the gentlemen out."
Nothing more was said by either, and in another minute or two there was a thud of hoofs as the outlaws rode away.
Nearly three weeks had slipped by since Leland met the outlaws, and his horses were missing still, when he sat in council at Prospect with a few of his scattered neighbours one bitter night. The big room was as bare and comfortless as it had been in his bachelor days, though there were cases at the railroad station whose contents would have transformed it, had he troubled to haul them in. Leland was somewhat grim of face, for the past few weeks had not been pleasant ones to him.
The breach between him and his wife was still as wide as ever, and he felt it the more keenly because, since the night of their frankness, she had shown no sign of anger. Instead, she had treated him with a civility that was hard to bear, and had professed herself content with all the arrangements at Prospect as they were. Leland was too proud a man to make advances which he felt would be repelled, and decided bitterly that, since nothing he could do would please her, the comforts she did not seem to care about might stay where they were until they rotted. Her own rooms, at least, were furnished and fitted luxuriously, in so far as he had been able to contrive it, and, since she spent most of her time in them, the one in which his mother had lived was good enough for him. Still, all this reacted upon his temper, and, on the night when he had his neighbours there, he was feeling the strain.
There were four of them, men who toiled early and late, and had a stake in the country, and they were all aware that others would probably be influenced by what they did. They listened to him gravely, sitting about the crackling stove with a box of cigars on the little table in front of them. There was nothing to drink, however, since, for several reasons, including the enactments of the legislature, strong green tea is the beverage most usually to be met with on the prairies, and of that they had just had their fill at supper. There was silence until one of them turned to the rest with a twinkle in his eyes.
"I'm with Charley Leland in most of what he says," he said. "The law's necessary, as you find out when you have lived, as I have, in a country where there isn't any. Still, after all, the enforcing of it is the business of the legislature, and the most they do for us is to worry us for statistics and fine us for not ploughing unnecessary fire-guards. Then there are two or three of us on this prairie who aren't fond of tea, and, as things are, we generally know where to get a little Monongahela or Bourbon when we want it. I guess it would give a kind of tone to thissoiréeif we had some of it now."
There was approving laughter until another man spoke.
"That's quite right, just as far as it goes," he said."Give me a chance of a square kick at the Scott Act, and I'll kick—like a mule. In the meanwhile, there it is, and you have to figure if breaking it is worth while. When you begin making exceptions, it's quite hard to stop. Now, I don't want to go round with a pistol strapped on to me, and, while we stand by the law, it isn't necessary. So long as I know that the crops I raise are mine and nobody can take them from me, I can do without my whisky. That's why I'm with Charley Leland in this thing, and you have to remember it's quite a big one."
"It is," said a third speaker. "Here we are, a few scattered farmers with stables and granaries that will burn, and horses that can be run across the frontier. Behind us stand Sergeant Grier and his four troopers, while, if we back up Leland, we have a tolerably extensive organisation against us, and the men who belong to it aren't going to stick at anything. If we are willing to live and let live, what do we stand to lose? A horse borrowed now and then, an odd steer killed, perhaps, an unbranded beast or two missing. Well, I guess it might work out cheaper than the other thing."
There was silence for a moment or two, and then a young man looked up languidly. He had come out four or five years before from Montreal.
"There is hard sense in all we have heard, but I think Leland's point of view is nearest the Academic one," he said. "Every honest man has a duty to the State, and it is certainly going to cost him more than he gains if he won't discharge it. There are probably more honest men than rogues everywhere, and yet one usually sees the rogues uppermost, for this reason:the honest man won't worry so long as they don't rob him, and his neighbour can't make a fight alone. Nobody is anxious to face the first blow for the benefit of the rest, and so the rogue gets bolder, until he becomes intolerable. Then the honest man stirs himself, and the rogues go down, though it causes ever so much more trouble than it would have done if the thing had been undertaken earlier. I'll give you an example. Begbie hung a man in British Columbia, the first one who wanted it, and there was order at once. Coleman and his vigilantes, who were scarcely quick enough, had to hang them by the dozen in California. Now we come to the question: How bad have things got to be before you think it worth while to do anything?"
It was evident that he had made an impression. He had shown them the dangers of toleration; and they were men who, while they did little rashly, believed in the greatness of their country. They looked at Leland, who turned to them with a little grim smile.
"They have gone quite far enough for me," he said. "I'm going to move now. The one thing I want to ask is, who is going to stand in with me?"
The man who had last spoken glanced at the rest. "I think you can count upon the four of us."
There was a murmur of concurrence, and Leland smiled. "As a matter of fact, I did so already, and asked Sergeant Grier to ride across and meet you to-night. He should be here any minute now. In the meanwhile I want to say that I've been riding up and down the country lately, and have reasons forsupposing there's a big load of whisky to be run during the next few days."
As they talked over this news, there was a knocking at the outer door, and a grizzled man who wore what had once been a very smart cavalry uniform was shown into the room. He sat down and listened with grave attention to what Leland had to say. Then he looked up quietly.
"I have to thank you, gentlemen, and I'll swear you in," he said. "From what I can figure, it must be Ned Johnston's gang, and they're about the hardest of the crowd. I haven't much fault to find with Mr. Leland's programme except on a point or two."
They discussed it for an hour, and, when all was arranged, one of them laughed as he laid his hand on Leland's shoulder. "I guess you're doing the right thing," he said. "Still, in one way, it's a little curious that it's you."
"Why?"
"Well," said the other man drily, "if I had just been married to a woman like Mrs. Leland, I figure I mightn't have been so willing to put myself in the way of a bullet. I'd have let somebody else make the first move and stayed at home with her."
Leland's face grew a trifle hard, as he forced a laugh. "I scarcely think marriage has made any great change in me, or that it's likely to do so."
Then his guests drove away, but the man to whom he had spoken remembered the look in Leland's face.
"Now I wonder what Charley meant by that," he said, getting into his sleigh.
Leland in the meanwhile had flung himself down into a chair beside the stove, and was lying theremoodily with an unlighted pipe in his hand, when his wife came in. It was evident that he did not notice her, and she had misgivings as she noticed the weariness in his attitude. After all, he was her husband, and he looked very lonely in the big bare room. She sat down beside him and touched his arm. "Your friends have gone?" she said.
The man looked up sharply, and she saw the little glow in his eyes, which, however, faded out of them again.
"Yes," he said. "I hope we did not disturb you."
"You were suspiciously quiet. What were you plotting together?"
"Nothing," said Leland. "That is, nothing you would probably care to hear about."
Carrie felt repulsed, though she would not show it. She had meant to be amiable, and she was a somewhat determined young woman, so she tried again.
"Isn't it a little lonely here?" she said. "Why did you not come up to me? I have scarcely seen you the last few days."
Leland's smile was not exactly reassuring. "I don't want to trouble you too often. Besides, I have been out in the frost since early morning, and feel a little tired and drowsy. One naturally doesn't care to appear to any more disadvantage than is necessary."
Carrie's lips and brows straightened portentously. "Were you afraid I might point it out to you, or do you wish to make it evident to everybody that you are purposely keeping out of my way?"
"I suppose I should have thought of that, but it's a thing that never occurred to me. Still, you asked meanother question, and, though perhaps it's weak of me, I can't help giving you an answer."
He stopped a moment and pointed round the desolate room, while the girl realised its dreariness as she saw the dry white ears on the walls quiver in the icy draughts and heard the wailing of a bitter wind outside the birch-log walls.
"Do you suppose—this—is what I bargained for when I asked you to marry me? You took the trouble not long ago to point out very plainly what you thought of me, and I think you meant every word of it. It was rather a bitter draught, but perhaps your point of view was a natural one. I am not the kind of man you have been accustomed to. In fact, there are very few points on which I resemble your father or Jimmy."
"Ah," said Carrie, "that was not meant to be conciliatory. It rather emphasises the distinction you mention. Still, I think you had not finished."
"Not quite. When you are willing to take me as I am, without prejudice, and give me a chance of winning your liking, you will not find me backward. Until then, I have a little too much self-respect to support you in pretending to be the dutiful wife because you think it becoming. Your contempt was honest, anyway."
Carrie rose with a little languid gesture. "I wonder how long this exceptionally pleasant state of affairs could be expected to continue?"
"Until you change your mind, or one of us is dead. If you get tired of it in the meanwhile, you can always go back to the Old Country for a few months or so."
"It is really a little difficult to understand what could have induced you to marry me."
Leland looked at her with a little grim smile. "I believe I gave you my reasons on another occasion. It would be rather more to the purpose to ask why you were content with them?"
The girl's cheeks burned, but she turned from him languidly. "You almost tempt me to tell you," she said. "Still, perhaps I have already let my candour carry me too far."
She went out of the big room quietly and naturally, but, when she reached her own apartment, she clenched her hands passionately. Though she was very angry, she had to realise that the man's attitude under the circumstances was by no means astonishing. She had also exactly what she had wished for, since it was clear that he would make no embarrassing advances now; and yet her courage almost failed her as she looked forward to an indefinite continuance of their present relations. He had said that, unless she made it, there could be no change until one of them was dead.
It was the next day, and she had seen nothing of Leland, when she met Gallwey, with whom she had become friendly.
The young man, she saw, was quite willing to constitute himself her devoted servant. At the same time, she felt the sincerity of his attachment for her husband, and drew from it a comfortable sense of security.
"Of course, you have heard the news?" he said. "I don't know if I'm presuming, or if it's kind to admit anything that might distress you, but it would be a relief to me if you could persuade Charley to be careful. I'm not quite sure he realises what he has undertaken."
Carrie had, of course, heard nothing, though she naturally refused to admit it. She also realised the irony of the fact that everybody except herself seemed attached to her husband. They were then standing in the big general room; but, after she had sat down and smilingly pointed the young man to a place near her, ten minutes of judiciously directed conversation left her with a tolerably clear notion of the state of affairs. She was also sensible of an illogical feeling of dismay and apprehension.
"But why does he do it?" she asked.
Gallwey looked thoughtful. "Well," he said, "somebody will have to take the thing up eventually, and, when there is anything unpleasant but necessary, Charley is usually there to do it. I almost fancy he can't help it. As they say in this country, that is the kind of man he is. Still, under the circumstances, I really think he ought to let the others take an equal risk, and it might be advisable for you to impress it upon him."
"You believe that what I said would have any influence?" asked Carrie, with a curious little smile.
"Of course!" and Gallwey gazed at her reproachfully. "Surely that ought to be evident."
"Well," said the girl, with a trace of languidness, "I have to thank you for warning me, and I will do what I can, though I am not very certain it will have any great effect on him."
Gallwey left her a few minutes later. Carrie, who was now very thoughtful, saw nothing of her husband that night or during most of the next day. He camein and asked for supper a little before dusk, and, when he had eaten it, carefully went over the lock and magazine action of a forty-four Marlin rifle. Then he put on his furs and girt himself with a bandolier. On reaching the outer door, he heard a swift patter of footsteps on the neighbouring stairs. As Carrie came up to him he stood still, with the blue rifle-barrel gleaming over his shoulder, looking like a giant in his shaggy coat. She was dressed, as he noticed, unusually prettily, and, although he set his lips, the little sparkle crept into his eyes. As it faded, the bronzed face, barely visible beneath the fur cap, became once more impassive.
The girl walked steadily up to him, and laid a hand upon his arm.
"You have given me a good deal, but I scarcely think I have asked you for anything yet. I want you to run no risk that isn't necessary to-night," she said.
Leland started, but again he put a constraint upon himself.
"So you know?" he said.
"Of course! Did you think, when everybody else knew, you could keep it from me? Still, that isn't what I asked you. I want you to be careful."
Leland looked at her, and though she saw the blood creep slowly into his face, his restraint was also evident.
"Did you say that because you believed it was the correct thing, madam?" he asked.
Carrie flushed, but the man, shaking her hand off his arm, laid his big mittened one upon her shoulder, and, holding her away from him, looked down on her gravely.
"You will try to forgive me that. It was a trifle brutal," he said, and his voice sank. "Still, to be quite honest, I could scarcely think that any risk I ran could cause you very much anxiety."
Carrie said nothing, for, with that steady gaze upon her, she could not pretend, even if her pride would have permitted her; and Leland smiled a trifle wistfully. His face was almost gentle now.
"Well," he said, "you needn't force yourself to say it would, if it hurts you, and I daresay it was kindness that prompted you to try. Still, you see, I should want a good deal, and anything you didn't mean wouldn't satisfy me. After all, it would make things easier for you if I didn't come back again."
The girl shivered. "You surely can't believe I would think of that?"
"No," and Leland made a little gesture, which was expressive of weariness; "it was your sense of fitness that turned you against me."
He let his hand fall from her shoulder. "After all, my dear, I am sorry for you."
"And yourself?"
"It is a little rough on me, but that can't be helped. Somehow or other I guess I can bear it."
Then he stooped, and, taking one of her hands, held it between both of his before he turned and flung open the door.
Carrie saw him for a moment, a tall, black figure silhouetted against the cold blue, and then he had vanished into the night.
An almost intolerable cold had descended upon the prairie when Leland reached the coulee where Sergeant Grier was mustering his forces late at night. They were not a very strong body, three troopers of the Northwest Police, all of them rather young, two prairie farmers, Leland, Gallwey, and the Sergeant, but the latter had decided that they would be enough, for the purpose. He was aware that, in an affair of this kind, a few men who understand exactly what they have to do, and can be relied on to set about it quietly and collectedly, are apt to prove more efficient than a larger body. The unnecessary man, he knew, is usually busy getting in his comrade's way. There was also another reason which Leland had pointed out. Since his acquaintances had undertaken the business, it was advisable that they should carry it out without exposing themselves unnecessarily to the outlaws' vengeance. There were several bands of the latter acting more or less in concert, and it would lessen the risks if there were only three or four men liable to them in place of several times as many.
The Sergeant quite concurred in this, and, whenLeland rode up stiff with frost, quietly sent the men out to their stations. Just there, the beaten trail that led south to the frontier dipped into one of the winding ravines, traversing the country with many a loop and bend. A sluggish creek flowed through its bottom beneath the ice, and a growth of willows and birches that there found shelter from the winds straggled up its sides. Trees fringed the crest of the dip, too, and in places overflowed into the prairie in scattered spurs. The trail ran through their midst, and there was no doubt that, if the outlaws came at all, which was not certain, they would come that way, since there are disadvantages attached to leading loaded horses through a thick birch-bluff in the darkness.
A farmer and one of the troopers were sent back to where the trees ran farther out into the prairie, and they were to lie hidden there and cut off the retreat in case the rustlers endeavoured to head back the way they had come. The main body lined the trail in the thickest of the bluff, just below the crest of the ravine, and Leland and one young trooper proceeded to the foot of the declivity. It would be their business to stop anybody who might succeed in breaking through the rest of the ambuscade. Each of them knew precisely what was expected of him, and the only uncertainty was whether the rustlers were coming, and if so, how many there would be of them.
It was a suitable night for their purpose, neither too dark nor too light. The heavens were barred with drifting wreaths of cloud, between which every now and then a half-moon and an occasional star shone down. The birches wailed as they shook theirfrail twigs beneath a bitter wind. Leland was sensible of a distressing tingling in his numbed feet and hands. The young trooper beside him limped and stumbled, a shadowy, indistinct figure in his furs, stiff with cold. Their softly moccasined feet made no sound. Both of them wondered whether they could use their slung rifles, if the necessity arose.
It is possible, without feeling desperately cold, to face the frost of the Northwest in a prairie waggon when one is packed about with hay and wrapped in big fur robes, but there are times when the man who travels on horseback runs the risk of freezing, and, because horses might be wanted, farmers and police troopers had ridden instead of driving. Leland was capable of moving, but the young trooper was in a far worse state, and sighed with relief when at last they stopped beside the creek, where a dense growth of willows kept off the stinging wind.
"I'm that cold I 'most can't hump myself," he said. "Seems to me I haven't got any feet on. I guess they're froze. Still, it's not quite so cruel as the night the corporal got one of his nipped. We were sleeping way back up Long Traverse trail in a pit in the snow, and were too played-out to waken when the fire got low. The frost had the corporal by the morning, but we'd most of twenty leagues to make, with two or three mighty cold camps on the way, and his moccasins opened up a wound. You couldn't have told he had a foot when I last saw him."
Leland said nothing. He was not inclined for conversation, and knew that instances of the kind were not uncommon. The wardens of the prairie probably know more about cold than anybody, except Arcticexplorers, and they are expected to face it shelterless in the open for days together when occasion arises. They cannot always find a birch-bluff to camp in, and the snow is frequently too thin to throw up a bank between them and the wind. Only hard men continue in that service, and perhaps the prairie wolf alone knows what becomes of some of the unfit who try it.
The lad, however, seemed impelled to talk, and stamped up and down beating his mittened hands, with the swivel of his slung carbine jangling as he moved.
"One would 'most wonder why you folks took a hand in," he said. "I guess if I'd been a farmer, it's more than I'd have done myself. There seem to be a blame lot of the rustlers, and, so far as we can figure, they stand in together. The three or four of us can't be everywhere at once, and they might take a notion of getting even by playing the fire-bug when the grass is dry in harvest season. I'd plough my fire-guards twice as wide. It would be quite easy to burn up a ripening crop."
Leland was aware that there would, unfortunately, be no difficulty in doing this, but he was willing to take his chances, and did not answer the lad. Indeed, the probable loss of a crop appeared a comparatively small matter to him just then. He was sore and bitter, and a feud with the outlaws would have been almost a relief. He felt that Branscombe Denham had tricked him, but sincerely desired to stand well with his wife, in spite of her scornful attitude towards him. He did not blame her for that altogether, though her words still rankled, but he would not expose himself to her disdain again, and had decided that if thingswere to be different, the first advances must be made by her. In the meanwhile, it was singularly unpleasant to both of them, and that night he was in a very sensitive and somewhat dangerous mood as he stood shivering among the willows.
"I guess they should be here by now, if the fellow who told us was playing a straight game," said the lad. "The trouble is, they've a good many friends, and nobody can tell exactly who's standing in with them. It's kind of easier to pick up an odd case of whisky and say nothing than to give us the office and have a fire-stick shoved into your granary. I'm not counting too much on the Ontario man."
In the meanwhile, the others fretted at the cold, and wondered how long the outlaws meant to keep them waiting. Two of them, upon whom all the rest depended for the warning, were just then crouching, almost frozen, where the thinnest of the birches broke off abruptly, watching a group of vague, shadowy shapes moving in their direction across the white wilderness. Gallwey stood behind them. A bank of sombre cloud sailed across the moon, and left the watchers in almost utter darkness.
"I can make out four, and there are more behind," said the trooper. "It's a sure thing. Snow's deep, and, as we figured, they'll stick to the trail. Guess you'd better get back and tell the Sergeant."
Gallwey slipped away, and there was silence for several minutes while farmer and policeman crept a little further back amidst the trees. Then a soft patter of hoofs and an occasional rattle came up the bitter wind as a line of men and horses grew into shape. They came on boldly, the men growling to one anotherand at the beasts. With no outriders forward, they plunged into the shadow of the birches. There the sounds grew louder, and the thud of hoofs, hoarse voices, crackle of trodden twigs, and creaking and jolting of burdens on pack-saddles, rang startlingly distinct through the crisp air. The trooper counted at least a dozen horses, but he could not quite make out how many men, for they walked among the loaded beasts, and the trail was very dark.
They went on by, half-seen, dim shadows that jostled one another among the trees; and, when the voices and the trampling grew less distinct, the trooper moved out into the trail, with his carbine in his mittened hands. The trap was sprung, for, if one or two of the outlaws succeeded in breaking through, it was evident that they must, at least, leave their beasts behind. With the farmer close behind him he moved cautiously a little nearer his comrades and then stood still again.
It was, perhaps, five minutes later when Leland, who was pacing to and fro, stopped abruptly, and held up his hand as the young trooper materialised out of the gloom in front of him.
"Can't you hear something?" he said.
The trooper thought he could, but his ears were almost covered by the big fur cap, and whilst they stood listening the birches swayed and wailed before a bitter gust. It seemed to search them to the marrow, for the cold was keen as a knife. Then through the night there came a dull, thudding sound down from the ridge above, and the trooper flung his carbine forward.
"They're here, sure," he said. "It's even chances we don't get a whack at one of them."
They stood listening for a minute or two, intent and high-strung, and heard only the wailing of the wind, for the birches once more swayed about them. It was almost dark, for the moon was still behind a cloud. As he moved his mittened hands on the Marlin rifle, Leland forgot that he was stiff in every limb. Then a voice rang, harsh and commanding, out of the shadows above them.
"Stop right there," it said. "We have got you covered."
It was followed by the whip-like crack of a pistol-shot, there was the louder jarring ring of a carbine or a farmer's rifle, and a confused din broke out. Men shouted and scuffled in the gloom, loaded beasts blundered among the trees and the undergrowth, while through it all there rose the detached beat of hoofs.
"One or two of them lit out, anyway," said the trooper. "Guess they'd slash the pack lariat, and get into the saddle when they'd let the whisky go. That sounds like one of the boys after them. Chancing a gallop, too. They'll break their necks certain, if they ride that way through the bluff."
He stopped a minute, and just then a faint silvery radiance swept athwart the birches as the moon shone down. It sparkled on the dropping smear of snow-sheeted trail, and the lad ran forward a pace or two fumbling with his carbine.
"Look out, Mr. Leland!" he shouted. "There are two of them riding slap down on us."
Two indistinct objects swept out of the shadows, and a moment later resolved themselves into men and galloping horses. They were thundering headlong down the sharply falling trail, and Leland felt his nerves tingle as he watched them. He was in a particularly unpleasant temper that night, and the prospect of an encounter stirred the half-frozen blood in him. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw the trooper standing a few paces away from him, and then fixed his gaze up the trail ahead. The horsemen were coming on at a mad gallop, taking their chances of a stumble, and he could see the powdery snow whirl about them like dust. Then they saw him standing grimly still in the middle of the trail, for one shouted a warning to the other, and the trooper cried aloud:
"Hold on! Pull up before we plug you," he said.
There was no answer. The riders were hard and fearless men, probably wanted by Montana sheriffs for things they had done during the cattle war, and they showed no sign of drawing bridle. One of them howled shrilly as he whirled a whip about his shoulders, and for a moment Leland saw him sway in the saddle with the beast stretched out beneath him.
Then there was a flash, and a detonation he scarcely heard, a cloud of smoke that floated up the trail, and man and horse came thundering down on him. He felt the jar of the Marlin rifle on his shoulder as he aimed at the flying form of a horse. In another moment the outlaw was almost upon him. Then in savage recklessness he leapt forward instead of back, with a hand that sought the bridle and an arm the rider's leg. His fingers closed on something—bridle, or saddle, or stirrup—and he clung with a stiffened grasp, while his feet were torn from under him and a rifle flashed.
Exactly what happened after that he did not know,but he was hurled forward, still clutching at something, with feet that scraped the snowy ice of the creek; and then there was a heavy crash, and what he held was torn away from him. He felt himself driven into a bank of snow, and lay there for perhaps a minute wondering vaguely if the life had all been smashed out of him, and listening to a sound of scuffling and floundering close by. Next he essayed to draw one of his feet up, and, to his astonishment, found that he had no great difficulty in accomplishing it. That done, he raised himself shakily, and, scrambling to one of the birches, leaned against it, gasping a little. A few seconds earlier he had been almost certain that he would never stand up again.
In the meanwhile the moonlight had grown a trifle brighter, for he could see a horse that lay near the middle of the creek still moving convulsively. Nearby, wrapped in an old fur coat, was an object that did not move at all. The trooper, who now had no carbine, stood stooping a little as he looked down on it, and there was a curious significant stillness in his attitude, whilst as much as could be seen of his young face appeared a trifle colourless. It was a moment or two before he became aware that Leland was on his feet again.
"He's dead, sure. It's the first man I ever plugged," he said, and his voice rang strained and harsh in the frosty air. "He just pitched off and never moved. Guess it couldn't have hurt him."
One could have fancied he was anxious about the point, but in another moment he turned away with a little deprecatory gesture, and commenced to grope about for his carbine.
"Anyway, I couldn't help it, and it was that quick—he never wriggled any—he couldn't have felt it."
The thing had its effect on Leland, though he had seen something very like it happen before, and he laid his hand reassuringly on the lad's shoulder.
"I don't think you need worry," he said. "He took his chances when he wouldn't stop, and it's not your responsibility. Anyway, we may as well make quite sure that he is dead."
There was no doubt on that point when he dropped on one knee beside the man, and he nodded as he glanced at the trooper.
"A sure thing. I'd like some kind of notion of what happened," he said.
"You jumped at him yonder, but I didn't quite see what you got hold of. Anyway, you went along with the horse—and him—until I pulled off, and you all came down together. You went down on the ice with a bang 'most fit to break it, and then into the snow-bank yonder. Guess you plugged the horse in a soft place when you fired. In the meanwhile the other man went by—whooping—like a whirlwind."
That was about all the explanation Leland ever got, but in another moment or two the trooper, who seemed to be looking at him curiously, spoke again.
"I'm kind of dazed," he said. "There's quite a lot of blood running down your forehead. I've been watching, and it never struck me you'd better know. I'll go up now and tell the Sergeant 'bout the other fellow who lit out."
Leland, who thrust back his fur cap and felt the gash on his forehead, decided that he was a little confused too, or he would have noticed that there was awarm trickle running down the outside of his nose. His mittens showed red smears in the moonlight when he tried to brush it away. When he next looked round, the trooper had disappeared; and, moving rather shakily, for his fall had not been without its effect, he too plodded up the climbing trail.
When he reached the level, he found several dejected men with manacled hands, and a line of loaded horses with two of the troopers watching them. The Sergeant, who appeared to be giving instructions to one of the troopers, turned to him.
"We have got four of them and most of the horses, but, so far as I can figure, two or three must have got away," he said. "The boys will try to pick their tracks up, and I'll ask you to give us a hand with the pack-horses as far as the forking of the trail."
Leland contrived to drive two of the loaded train, though his head was aching and he felt very dizzy. When at last he was about to turn off into a second sledge-track, the Sergeant pulled up his horse beside him.
"We are much obliged, Mr. Leland, and you'll hear all that's done," he said. "Still, it's a kind of pity one of the two you fell in with got away."
"I don't suppose you are particularly pleased any of them broke through, for that matter," said Leland.
The Sergeant made a little impressive gesture. "The point is that they'd both have got off, if it hadn't been for you, and that fellow's partner isn't going to blame—the trooper. That's all in the business. Well, if I were you, I'd keep clear of the bluffs and ravines if you have to go out when it's dark."
He shook his bridle and rode on, whilst Leland stooda minute or two watching the others straggle out along the trail. Last of all a trooper led a horse which carried an amorphous burden wrapped in a fur coat, and lashed on with a pack-lariat. Something that looked like a moccasined foot trailed down on one side in the snow, and, judging from the trouble the beast gave its driver, it did not like what it carried.
"It's quite likely that fellow's partner will try to get even," he said.